Embodiments of the invention generally relate to electronic data storage, and more particularly to managing data privacy in data storage systems.
New electronic data is constantly generated at a rapid pace in both the enterprise and consumer electronic spaces. In the consumer electronic space, for instance, users generate large volumes of electronic data in various file formats. On a personal mobile device such as a phone or a tablet, for example, a user sends and receives emails, text messages, voice messages, images, videos, and other data files.
A growing trend in data management is to backup the data, either manually, or on a regular basis according to a backup schedule. One motivation behind this trend is to provide a recovery solution in case of data loss, where if a primary storage device fails, or if the data is needed on a new device, the data may be recovered from a backup storage source. Another motivation is to provide data synchronization and sharing across multiple devices in concurrent or near-concurrent use.
Some service providers offer services to address the need for data recovery and synchronization. In one instance, data generated by or stored on a computing device, such as a mobile phone, is pushed to the cloud, where it is stored and made available for recovery in case of loss, and for data sharing across user devices. For example, a mobile device user snaps an image on the user's mobile phone using the phone's built-in camera. The mobile phone stores the image on its local storage, and additionally pushes the image to a cloud storage service, causing the image to be stored on a remote storage device operated by a cloud storage service provider.